


wake up young again

by Legendaerie



Series: the proud remainders [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Clothed Sex, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Wall Sex, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:41:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22122748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: “Just once. Before we die.”—-Sylvain is easier to read than he thinks.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: the proud remainders [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588771
Comments: 27
Kudos: 242





	wake up young again

**Author's Note:**

> continuing to inflict you all with songs from my sylvix playlist, this time with lyrics inspired by False Confidence by Noah Kahan and... 6k of porn. yeah. back on brand.
> 
> Please note there IS a prior entry in this series - they’re fairly standalone, but you might get a little bit more character development reading the first one before this one.

It doesn’t get better when they arrive at Garrag Mach. If anything, it might have gotten worse.

The moment Felix gets off Sylvain’s horse he storms inside the entrance hall, leaving his friends to untack their mounts and exchange worried looks.

“Good for him to stretch his legs, I guess,” Sylvain says, trying and failing to not sound worried.

“Yeah,” Ingrid echoes, and starts to unbuckle her pegasus’ saddle.

Being welcomed back into a battle felt only natural, really; a release of the tension they had been carrying their entire trip. For all Felix’s rage against Dimitri’s tenuous grasp on sanity, Sylvain wonders if there’s echoes of it in him. Where Dimitri was hunger and fire, Felix is apathy and ice, cutting down bandits with barely a glance at their fallen bodies. Barely a glance at anyone, and it’s not unlike him to avoid eye contact, but--

“Did you hear me? Sylvain?”

He jumps. “What?”

Ingrid sighs and comes to stand in the stall door, blocking his exit. “What happened between you two, the night we spent in the barn?”

If there’s any look he’s perfected, it’s guileless bewilderment. “We slept. What makes you think something happened?”

“You. You just keep— looking at him.”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “And?”

Ingrid hesitates with her next choice of words. “Just be careful, all right?”

He laughs at her as he slides the saddle off his stallion’s back. “I’ve never in my life been careful, and careful makes cowards in war.”

He hears her sigh - hears the moment she gives up on him entirely. Good. The last thing he needs is Ingrid’s suspicion making mountains out of molehills. He’ll be over Felix in a week.

  
  


* * *

He is not.

It’s like a fever, simmering under his skin and clouding his judgement. Every time Felix walks past Sylvain he can _feel_ Felix’s uneven breath against his skin, the way he shook like he was crying. He cried a lot when they were kids. Sylvain remembers being the only one of their quartet who would have the patience to soothe instead of scold, remembers trying to be a good big brother to Felix when Glenn was still around to show him how to be one. And then Glenn died and Felix snapped closed like a steel trap.

Sylvain didn’t think he’d ever see Felix vulnerable again. Maybe that’s why he can’t stop thinking about it.

Ingrid was right. He does stare at Felix. He can’t stop. The only saving grace is that Felix doesn’t look at anyone, so he never notices.

Sylvain is good at hiding his feelings; in the bedroom, he can bury every lingering hurt or sour resentment so deep that not even the throes of passion or the vulnerability of the afterglow can bring them to light.

He thinks he’s perfectly safe, right up until Claude takes his queen in chess.

“Oh,” he says as his most valuable piece is plucked from the board, “I didn’t see that coming.”

“That’s because you weren’t looking when I made my last move,” Claude informs him, watching him with a faint smile. 

“I wasn’t?”

“No. Your eyes were _elsewhere.”_

His board games with Claude are difficult enough that it usually takes his complete focus; a great way to engross himself when certain other parties are hogging the training grounds. But they were sitting in the gazebo today on account of good weather, and Felix had walked by in conversation with Leonie of all people. Sylvain had felt a sting of panic that he had been replaced and watched them pass by.

In the present, realizing Claude had taken advantage of his distraction, Sylvain scowls.

“That’s _cheating.”_

“All my moves were perfectly legal.” Claude puts the queen back on the board and reverses several steps of gameplay; the entire sequence was obvious. Sylvain missed the danger over the course of multiple rounds. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

Sylvain is a little older than Claude, but those green eyes have always sparkled with untapped genius. Here, they glitter like the sea and its fathomless depths as Claude raises an eyebrow.

“You and Felix.”

It’s like sparring. Sylvain feels the moment his shield is knocked to the side and knows he’ll never block the next strike. Like his arrows, Claude’s gaze pierce him to the heart.

“I won’t pretend I know the details,” Claude says, twirling Sylvain’s queen in his fingers, “but there’s no reason for Teach to put a swordsman with a cavalier unit unless she thought you would protect each other better than anyone else.”

“Teach, like Sothis, acts in mysterious ways,” Sylvain says bitterly, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms. “It’s not like I asked her to do anything.”

“Your eyes did,” Claude murmurs. “Like they did a minute ago.”

Sylvain freezes. 

It’s true that Felix doesn’t look - Felix hates eye contact. But he’s forgotten, in the middle of it all. Everyone has always looked at Sylvain.

Claude leans across the board, heedless of the game. “Hey, hey. Easy there. I’m not gonna tell anyone. No one here will mind.”

His words strike a nerve in Sylvain that shakes him to the core, makes him drop his cavalier mask. He barks a laugh, bitter and broken. “No one _here,”_ he starts. “There’s a world outside Garreg Mach, at war, and we deserted our country. We’re _traitors_. If we’re not executed, we’ll be forced to marry noble women for our houses. It doesn’t—“

Sylvain snaps his mouth shut. Too late. Claude doesn’t even have the decency to look surprised at Sylvain’s outburst.

“If the world is so unfair,” he says with meaning, holding Sylvain’s gaze with his own piercing green one, “that’s all the more reason to change it, isn’t it? Or at the very least, enjoy the time you have.”

The moment holds between them. A cloud shadow skims across the grass, melting into the shade cast by the gazebo.

There is no clear line between Claude’s mask and his true self. “Another round?” he asks, his tone only a little lighter than his previous words had been, his eyes no less intense. He’s a fair match for the Professor. Sothis Herself would be afraid of children made by their union.

“Only if you let me pick the next flavor of tea,” Sylvain says, pulling on a smile that he’s long outgrown.

* * *

Felix is seldom any place other than the training grounds. Sylvain is keenly aware of this fact every time he passes by the closed doors at night and hears the strike of wooden sword on wooden body. Keenly aware that Felix is alone, that he could slip in and corner him. Keenly aware that he still walks away. 

Like weeds, Claude’s words take up roots in Sylvain’s head. No one here will mind. It’s tempting for someone so used to taking advantage of temporary bliss - a habit he’d tried to break over the war, helped by the fact that his depression and desperation were harder to hide from potential lovers when he was hours away from the battlefield - but he hesitates. 

Every time he comes close to considering why something temporary with Felix terrifies him, his train of thought skitters to the side like a frightened horse. Unlike the horses that he soothes with gentle words and a soft touch, Sylvain just pushes himself harder to ignore it with a steady stream of excuses. 

It’s just sexual energy he needs to burn off.

It was just once. 

He’s fine.

Finding his way to the monastery cellar and getting himself tipsy on wine are the actions of a perfectly normal, mentally stable young man.

The first time he does it, he makes it back to his room without issue. Trips a little on the stairs but, hey, when you ride horses all day your legs get a little weak and achy. 

The second time he drinks a bottle and a half and doesn’t totally remember getting back to his room but the only person who looked at him oddly the next day was the professor. Doesn’t count. She looks at everyone with that same vacant stare.

The third time, only half a bottle later and considerably earlier in the night, is the charm. Sylvain emerges from the stairwell to be struck by the sight of Felix in lamp light. Smoke is still curling from the end of the lighting wick, pale and delicate as a lover’s caress as Felix turns to look at him. Too quickly, he looks away.

Too quickly, and not quickly enough.

It comes to him suddenly, the lucidity of the liquored prophet. The way Felix doesn’t look at him is just as telling as the way Sylvain knows his own eyes soften at the sight of Felix’s back.

“Lighting the lamps?” Sylvain asks, his words melting like butter in his mouth.

“Cyril is out on a training mission with the Professor,” Felix says, already walking away. “Someone has to.”

He strikes a match and lights another. Sylvain follows. Felix tenses as Sylvain approaches, but he doesn’t move away.

Sylvain feels like the fragile flame at the end of the wooden match, bright and hot and unsteady. “Want me to help?” he asks. “I’m getting pretty good at magic. Mine is fire, you know.”

“I’m aware.”

He doesn’t corner Felix. He knows he couldn’t if he tried. Felix is fast and smart and is used to darting under an enemies guard; used to using skill and maneuvering to pierce someone’s heart. Sylvain has only ever lowered his lance and charged.

He doesn’t corner Felix. Felix lets himself get cornered and watches Sylvain with eyes the color of summer yet as cold and sharp as winter.

“What do you want?” Felix levels the question at him, sharp and hard.

Sylvain leans in. “You have to ask?” and grazes his lips along Felix’s jaw.

“Don’t,” Felix says, but doesn’t struggle. 

Sylvain knows what is a _‘no’_ and what is a _‘convince me.’_ What is a _‘work for it.’_ This isn’t a no. So he moves his mouth to the shell of Felix’s ear and lets his breath caress the sensitive skin there.

“I was thinking about you,” he murmurs, “and how pleased I was to find you up here all alone.”

From this close, he can hear the change in Felix’s breathing as his pulse picks up. “Were you?” He’s trying and failing to keep his voice perfectly even. The way his tone rises and breaks on the first syllable brings the ocean to mind, the waves curling like tongues to lash the shore, and Sylvain wants to swim in it.

“I was,” he confesses, resting on his forearms. Caging Felix in, as if Felix isn’t in a better position than ever to drive a knife through Sylvain’s heart. As if he isn’t probably armed at this very minute. “I wanted—“

Seduction is another game to Sylvain; more like cards than chess. It’s about knowing how to read the other person, what cards they hold and what they want you to be holding. Sometimes a loss is necessary for the overall win, and sometimes he bets and loses. It’s all part of the great dance the Crest bearing nobles must learn, where each misstep can lead to more than just bruised toes. 

But Felix isn’t a stranger he has to assess or a fling to win over for a night of mutual enjoyment; he _knows_ Felix, past and present and hopefully future as well. He will have to look at him tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that until death or circumstance rip them apart again. And in his sentimentality, Sylvain makes the one mistake you can never make in poker or in romance: he is honest.

“I wanted to know if you would let me touch you again,” he whispers, burning and melting like a candle at his own confession. “Will you?”

Felix has stopped breathing. For one long, miserable moment, Sylvain stops too.

“If you must,” Felix says, turning his head ever so slightly towards Sylvain’s. Like this, in the tender glow of a newly lit oil lamp, they kiss.

The first time Sylvain had held the Lance of Ruin, it felt like just by touching it, it would tear his soul out of his body. Simultaneously burning him like hot iron and sucking him down into darkness like a swamp, he’d hated it. Kissing Felix is the cousin to that feeling, knocking his wits out of him with whispered promises of heaven no less frightening than the threat of hell of the Relic; for he knows that neither are real.

And yet.

He doesn’t corner Felix but he does pin him, hard, against the wall. Press up against him and surround him with himself, holding Felix’s face in both hands and kissing him with the flimsiest thread of self control holding him together. Felix makes a soft sound, then a sharper one accompanied by a push on Sylvain’s shoulders.

“How—” Felix clears his throat. “How drunk are you? I can taste it on your lips.”

“Good question,” Sylvain agrees, licking his lips. Eye contact seems too intense for Felix right now, but his golden gaze tracks the motion of Sylvain’s tongue. “I can walk a straight line if I need to. Wake up with a lil’ headache tomorrow.”

Felix huffs. Sylvain is generous enough to give him another second to speak further before he kisses him again, throwing caution to the wind in favor of kissing Felix until they forget their own names. The smack of their lips and the increasing labor of their breath sound too loud in the empty hallway, but Sylvain wants more. He licks his way into Felix’s mouth and flicks his tongue against the back of Felix’s teeth just to tease.

The sound Felix makes is holy and profane at once. It hits Sylvain low in the stomach, flooding him with heat like the clear Brigid liquor Petra had once shared with him. Sylvain tries it again, this time sucking on Felix’s lower lip afterwards, and finds himself spun around and slammed against the brick.

“Do _not,”_ rasps Felix, _“play_ with me.”

“What?” Sylvain asks, winded, his blood still a little too south to make logical thought easy.

“I won’t—” he swallows, panting against Sylvain’s mouth. “I won’t be _used_ by you.”

Amber eyes meet cinnamon, and burn.

“Never,” Sylvain breathes, bending down to capture Felix’s lips again.

“I mean it,” Felix says. Some of the edge of his ultimatum is lost with how he chases Sylvain’s mouth, presses their foreheads together. “This isn’t— I don’t—”

Therein lies the core of Sylvain’s reluctance, bright and hard like a Crest stone. Felix isn’t his to love. He never will be. Even if Sylvain could turn his back on everything he’s been raised to be, Felix wouldn’t choose Sylvain.

But there was a time that he might have.

“I know you don’t,” Sylvain says, turning Felix’s head to press featherlight kisses along his jaw. He can feel the faint prick of stubble there, pictures Felix dragging a blade across his skin every morning to keep his face bare to avoid looking like his father. “I know, but— we can pretend for a little while that you do.”

Felix moans, the hard lines of his body going soft as he allows Sylvain to pull him closer, and Sylvain know he’s going to be fantasizing about that sound for years. Felix’s hand slides up Sylvain’s back to tangle in his hair, pulling his head back with a yank that jerks a deep needy noise from Sylvain’s throat.

“No marks,” Felix says, squirming against Sylvain’s body. Curse this goddamn armor; the only other part of Felix he can feel is the heat and shape of Felix’s cock on his thigh and it’s going to _kill him._

“Sure,” he agrees, staring at the ceiling and breathing hard. Felix’s grip in his hair is like iron, but he wouldn’t want it looser for the world. “My room?”

“No.”

“Yours.”

“N—” Sylvain guides Felix’s hips to grind against him and Felix cuts himself off with a gasp. He did that last time, too, like he was surprised to have an affect on Sylvain. Like he wasn’t the one person Sylvain couldn’t live without.

Like he still isn’t.

“No,” Felix repeats, and bites Sylvain’s chin. “Pay attention.”

Sylvain laughs softly, stretching his tongue out to try to taste a bit of the saliva Felix’s teeth left on his skin. It succeeds in distracting his captor at least, and Felix’s grip loosens. “Whatever it is that you want, it’s yours,” he says, glancing over and down.

_Shit._ He wasn’t ready to see Felix like this, red cheeked and dark eyed, staring at his mouth like he can’t decide whether he wants to slap it or kiss it. 

“Come here,” Felix says instead, voice deep and rough just from this, and Sylvain is determined to get his mouth on Felix’s the moment they get wherever they’re going.

Felix staggers to the end of the hall, letting Sylvain chase him like a shadow and press against his back as he fumbles with a door. It’s some kind of supply closet; he can hear the muffled conversations of glass bottles bumping into each other when the door swings open and Sylvain slams Felix into a shelf.

“Oops,” he says, hearing something roll. He shoots out a hand and catches the bottle before it breaks, only half paying attention. Even in the faint light from the lamps in the hall, he can see Felix’s eyes dilate.

This time it’s Felix who gets his tongue in Sylvain’s mouth first, grabbing his face with both hands and kissing him so deeply and thoroughly that he’s dizzy when they stop to breathe. His mouth tingles. He didn’t know kisses could do that.

Felix has said something; too late, Sylvain tries to listen. “What?”

“Give me your fingers,” Felix says, grabbing Sylvain’s wrist and pulling off his glove. Sylvain’s cock jerks in his pants, and he whines.

“Ah— Felix, you gotta warn me before you—”

“Light it,” Felix grits, and shoves Sylvain’s arm into something metal above their heads. Oh. Oh, okay.

A spark of magic travels down his arm, and Sylvain snaps his fingers. The lamp flickers to life, casting Felix’s face in drastic, dancing shadows. Ignis had showed him a painting like this before, called it chiaroscuro. Sylvain hadn’t cared for the subject but had been drawn to the contrast there, between ink black and sunshine gold.

He can’t call Felix art, but he paints the memory in his head anyway.

“Shut the door,” Felix says, leaning in to Sylvain again. He can’t not kiss him as he’s pushed a couple steps back until his searching hands find the closet door and shove it. The lock clicks with dramatic finality.

They stare at each other. Felix closes his eyes and takes in a trembling breath, crows feet forming in the corners of his eyes as he braces himself. It’s a face Sylvain hasn’t seen on Felix for years, one that reminds him of the sensitive little boy who used to come to him crying over anything. 

How cruel for fate to make Felix inherit the role of shield, when Sylvain’s happiest years were spent playfully protecting him.

“I want to know it once,” Felix says when he opens his eyes. “Just once. Before we all die.”

“Come on,” Sylvain starts, his own jovial tone hollow, backpedaling his point as the words tumble out, “it’s not gonna be _you_ who dies out there.”

Something flickers in Felix’s eyes - stunned, maybe, into silence. Sylvain takes full advantage, finding a wall not lined by shelves and pinning Felix to it, one hand in Felix’s hair as the other dances down his side to his stomach. He makes a fist in Felix’s coat and pulls it up, shoving his hand under the material to stroke the hot skin underneath.

Felix makes a strangled noise and pushes into Sylvain’s touch, fumbling to bring him closer only to push him away.

“Just once,” he says, “please.”

He twists his hip to the side, guides Sylvain’s hand to the curve of his ass and kisses him with need.

_Sothis, Seiros, and all the holy saints._

“Fuck,” Sylvain gasps against his lips, “fuck, fuck— yes, I’ll— he spins Felix again, hands shaking, and presses Felix’s chest into the wall. “Like this?”

Bracing his hands on Felix’s hips, he grinds against his ass, and just that— just this alone could bring him to the edge and over, especially when Felix yowls and claws the wall like a cat in heat.

“Y—yes,” Felix manages when he pulls himself back together, bracing his elbows against the wall and letting Sylvain rut against his ass, shivering like it’s something good for them both. “Only— Only this time, okay? Not— I won’t—”

_“Sshhh,”_ and he presses himself against Felix’s back, tilting the swordsman’s head to the side to press a kiss on his mouth that he comes far too close to meaning. “Shhhh, I’ve got you. I know. I’ll fuck you right. No one will know.”

_No one will mind,_ says Claude in his head. 

Sylvain repeats the phrase back at him, bitter. _No one but Felix._

He snaps his hips and Felix hisses. Right. He has a _favor_ to give to his childhood friend. “Thank the goddess we’re in a room filled with oil,” he says, snatching the first one he finds and giving it a sniff. He’s in luck - it’s safe. “Get your pants down for me, come on.”

Felix fumbles with the ties and buckles of his clothing as Sylvain palms his own cock, leaving his armor on. Better be prepared when Felix throws him out. Too many pieces to put back in order in the afterglow.

The long coat Felix wears robs him of the sensual reveal of bare skin when Felix shuffles his clothes down to the top of his boots, but when Sylvain lifts up his coat he startles like a girl up-skirted by the breeze. 

It’s worth the wait to see it in lamplight. He traces up the back of Felix’s thighs with his fingertips, fitting his palm to the muscular shape of his ass. Supple. Beautiful. Fleeting.

“You ready?” Sylvain asks.

Felix nods and presses his forehead against the brick. He tenses again when Sylvain’s oil-slick fingers travel down his spine and lower to his taint. The hand pinning the tails of Felix’s coat up rub soothing circles between his shoulder blades.

“I’ve got you, you know I do. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.” Sylvain keeps his voice low and calm as he works a finger in through the ring of muscle. 

Felix sucks in a breath and gasps, a little less threatening than usual: “don’t use your horse voice on me, you asshole.”

He laughs. He doesn’t mean to do it, but it comes out, and he leans in to nuzzle the nape of Felix’s neck. 

“If it works,” he says, and slips in another finger. Felix groans. “Would you look at that? It does. Guess you’re a horse now, huh.”

_“Nnnn_ — fuck,” and all the steel has left his voice, leaving it hypnotically soft. “You—”

“Yeeees?” he asks, drawing out the question as he carefully spreads his fingers. Felix’s back arches in response.

“You—,” he says again, “Can you— deeper, a little deeper.”

He tries to spread his legs wider but he can’t - his thighs are held tightly together by his pants halfway down his thighs. Distracted by this, it takes Sylvain a moment to realize what he’s being asked to do.

“This?” he asks, pushing his fingers in as deep as they’ll go, pressing gently against that impossibly soft, impossibly tight wet heat until—

Felix wails, loud enough Sylvain thinks they could be heard downstairs, and tenses around Sylvain’s fingers. “Yes, y-yes yes _yes,”_ he stammers, shaking, hips jerking with more strangled moans.

If he doesn’t get his cock in Felix in the next thirty seconds, he’s pretty sure he’s going to die or come completely untouched. Not even his wildest dreams could come close to matching this and the sounds that Felix makes. None of his favorite girls have come close.

He pours oil down Felix’s tailbone; too much, honestly, but it makes Felix twitch and huff against the wall. “One second, babe,” Sylvain murmurs, “lemme finish working you open then I’m gonna fill you up so good.”

“I’m not— not a _babe,”_ Felix complains, turning his head to glare at Sylvain from the corner of his eye. Sylvain kisses him again, rubbing his free hand along Felix’s jaw line, smearing some oil along there and grinning at the disgusted noise that elicits.

“Shhh,” he says again, “I know.”

“Or a horse.”

“I know,” Sylvain repeats, nipping at Felix’s ear and reveling in the ah, fuck it earns him. “Would rather _you_ ride _me,_ anyway.”

Felix takes in a sharp breath and Sylvain stills, watching him carefully - if all they have is this once, he’s going to do his best. Or his tipsy-best. Whatever. “Keep going,” Felix growls after a moment. So bossy.

Sylvain works his way up to three fingers, taking his time with it. There’s enough oil in the closet to fuck for weeks on end, months even - and Felix is taking it so well. Or so horribly, depending on the perspective.

“I’m going— _nnhhh,”_ he moans as Sylvain rotates his wrist to press two fingers around his prostate, “to kill you. I can do it. You know— _oh_ — you know I can.”

“Yeah, I do,” the paladin agrees, tugging off his other glove with his teeth and a bit of effort. “I’ve seen you fight. Could tear me apart.”

There’s sweat beading on the back of Felix’s neck. He licks it off with light, sensual strokes of his tongue. 

“That’s why getting you this _desperate_ is so much fun,” and he sinks his teeth into the back of Felix’s neck.

The sound that tears itself from Felix’s throat has to hurt - it’s low and rough and thoroughly broken. But he doesn’t fight to get away from Sylvain’s grip, instead rocking his hips back and fucking himself on Sylvain’s fingers. If his composure wasn’t breaking already, this would have done it for sure.

When he lets go, Sylvain feels a flash of pride at the two semi circles of marks there. Let Felix turn his back to Sylvain all he wants now. He’ll remember the bite long after it heals. “Like that, huh?”

“Die,” Felix rasps, bracing himself on his elbows against the wall, letting his head hang as he shivers. 

“You’re welcome.”

He makes an irritated hiss but changes his tune when Sylvain pulls his fingers out - arching his back with a soft moan escaping from clenched teeth.

“Easy, easy,” and Sylvain rubs his palm up Felix’s back again - maybe a little bit of oil gets wiped off there, he’ll deal with Felix’s wrath later if he figures it out - and loosens the fly of his pants. The relief is incredible, and he lets out his own groan as he touches his aching cock. “I’m not done.”

Felix huffs again, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Better not be,” he gripes.

His hands on Felix’s hips make them both shudder, but Sylvain stalls. A little mean itch in him demands to be scratched, demands to wring every last bit of pleasure out of his friend and make him beg for it. “Oh? Why not?”

“Because I— because you haven’t done your job yet.”

“My _job?”_ Sylvain says, flinching. This was a bad idea. All of it. “Are you going to pay me for my services, Mr. Fraldarius?”

Felix is quiet. 

The moment hangs heavy between them like a pendulum in a stopped clock. Sylvain is still hard and he’s pretty sure Felix is too, but neither of them move.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Felix says, so soft he almost doesn’t hear the confession. “Not now.”

“But you will later,” he replies, as cold as the Gautier lands he was supposed to protect and as cruel as his brother, “after I’ve finished fucking you. All right.”

Felix doesn’t reply to that, so Sylvain slicks them both up with more oil. Pushes the head of his cock slowly inside the tight ring of muscle, sinking his teeth into his tongue and letting the agony counter balance out the bliss, tasting metal and wine both.

The man under him shudders but keeps quiet. Sylvain keeps going, working himself inside; each molten velvet inch clinging to him and clenching around him perfectly. And yet, it doesn’t feel any different than any of the women he’s been with. The same hollow heat.

Silence holds them both captive. 

Sylvain finds his hands are shaking. He presses his forehead against Felix’s back. Sighs and nuzzles the line of his tense shoulder.

“Let’s not fight, then. Make me a promise. Don’t use me like this again, all right?” For all that his chest hurts, it still feels so good he forgets himself again. “The next time we do this, it’s going to mean something.”

The ends of Felix’s hair brush Sylvain’s head as he nods. 

“Okay.”

In unknown unison, they let out a breath in relief. Sylvain rocks his hips to bring them flush together and presses a kiss to the teeth marks on Felix’s neck. “Better?” he asks. Trying, as much as he can, to undo the years of damaged trust between them. To act like a better person than he really is.

In reply, Felix nods again and tries to move against Sylvain, angling his hips and standing on his tip toes. “You’re not— quite there.” Never one to shy away from critique.

At least Sylvain is willing to listen to him. “C’mere, then,” and he takes a half step backwards, yanking Felix’s hips with him. 

The swordsman staggers back at the manhandling, tensing up. Sylvain swears under his breath and eases out a little, trying to remember how to breathe. Fuck, it’s really good already. Shit. How’s he gonna last when Felix is like this, vocal and vulnerable and so, so, _so_ _fucking tight?_

“Curve your back a bit more— yeah,” he soothes, his heartbeat tripping at how unexpectedly pliant Felix is. “That’s it. I’m gonna fuck you right.”

_“Please,”_ comes the soft moan, hitting him like a jolt of Thunder. Sylvain eases out and slams back home: blessed with perfect accuracy, and Felix wails as the head of Sylvain’s cock strokes his prostate then slaps a hand over his mouth.

Pulling back and rolling his hips, trying to find a ruthless sort of rhythm, Sylvain scolds Felix. “No, no, no,” and he tugs Felix’s hand away from his mouth. “None of this. I want to hear you. I want to _remember_ this.”

Even if Felix doesn’t.

Felix presses his forehead to the brick but doesn’t pull his arm out of Sylvain’s grip, sex making him surprisingly compliant. Shuddering, he mewls with Sylvain’s next thrust, back arching and feet shifting on the stone floor as he tries to meet Sylvain halfway. Listening to him. Working with him. Wanting him.

Here, of all places, the Felix he knew as a child is back in his arms.

“Say my name,” he urges, sliding his hand up Felix’s arm to hold him in position as he starts to fuck him in earnest. Sweat beads along his skin, the heat from inside Felix roaring through his veins like fire and liquor. “My name. No one else’s.”

“Sylvain.”

He chokes on a gasp. “Again,” he urges. Begs. “Say it again, Fe.”

“Sylvain,” he cries, voice breaking on the second syllable when Sylvain thrusts home, “Sylvain, Sylvain, _Sylvain.”_

It hurts. 

Sylvain pulls out and shushes Felix’s broken cry, turning him around and kissing him with both hands cupping his face. “I’m not leaving,” he says, a little nonsensically, “I promised. Not without you. Never without you.”

They don’t have time to get Felix’s pants and boots off so Sylvain just picks him up and pins him to the wall, folding him up and tucking his legs over Sylvain’s arms. Like this he can see Felix’s face when he presses in again - the way his eyes widen and his mouth falls open, the edge of shock that bleeds so quickly into red-faced pleasure.

“When did— you get this _strong?”_ Felix manages, eyes closing as his breath starts fraying ragged at the edges.

“How do you think?” Sylvain counters, angling his hips to hit that spot that drives Felix wild. “Been fighting as much as you have. Maybe more.”

The swordsman moans, biting his lower lip; unacceptable, and Sylvain has to lean in and bite it for him. “M sorry,” Felix mumbles between kisses, his hands gripping Sylvain’s biceps, fingers stroking between the gaps in the plate metal. It’s the most erotic thing Sylvain has felt in his life.

“Sorry?” he gasps, unable to bend Felix further and press kisses to his neck like he wants, groaning in irritation. 

“You don’t like fighting,” Felix continues. “Sorry you— we have to.”

Sylvain swallows. Of all the things to get to him tonight, it’s that little flash of kindness as Felix opens unfocused amber eyes. That spark of familiarity and fondness.

“I’d fight for us both if I could,” Felix says, moaning as Sylvain’s hips jerk and drive him deeper into Felix’s body. “F-fuck. Oh, _goddess.”_

There. Sylvain rolls his shoulders, ignoring the way his body aches from the strain of holding Felix up, and picks up his pace. The carnal slap of skin on skin is loud in the confined space, wet and hot and perfect. Felix reaches between them with trembling hands to stroke his own cock, little broken noises spilling from his mouth with every jolt of their bodies. 

He’s so beautiful. Sylvain understands now, why men would go to war for their lovers. Even as the knowledge sinks in, he shakes his head to reject it. 

“Don’t fight for me,” he rasps, not sure if Felix can hear him over the sounds of their tryst. “We’ll fight for each other. For a better world than the one we’re in.”

Felix looks up at him from under long lashes, his cheeks red and damp with sweat. Their gazes lock and hold, searing, melting together like molten gold and bronze.

“I—”

Felix’s eyes dilate then close as he seizes between them, coming with a strangled shout. Sylvain grits his teeth and fucks him, hard, through it all, lowering his head and panting “ah, sh-shit, _Felix_ ” as the pulses of Felix’s muscles yank him over his own edge and into oblivion.

There’s a clatter of metal and a distinct sound of shattering glass. Sylvain tries and fails to keep them both upright, sliding to his knees and collapsing against Felix. His cock slides out of Felix’s hole, making them both flinch at the sensation of loss.

Sylvain presses one last kiss on Felix’s cheek, hiding his face in the side of Felix’s neck. Taking in deep breaths of the scents of sex and sweat and lantern smoke, committing them to memory, he drags his lips across the tender skin. There’s a scar he finds there, small and jagged on the edges. It’s new. He laves it with the tip of his tongue and seals it with a kiss.

Felix groans softly, stirring in his grasp. “Move. My back hurts.”

Not surprising. Sylvain has practically folded him in half, his legs over Sylvain’s shoulders. When he pulls back to answer, Felix glares at him; most of the heat in his stare lacking as he tries to recover from the punch-drunk effects of orgasm.

“Give me a second,” he says, rubbing his hands along Felix’s bare thighs and watching his eyes darken. “Just got done holding you against a wall for several minutes. Little sore myself.”

“Nnnn.”

Sylvain scoots backwards, easing Felix down to wall to rest on his back on the floor, thighs still splayed across Sylvain’s lap. There’s spots of semen on the front of his coat.

Leaning over him, Sylvain brushes Felix’s bangs out of his face.

“Hi,” he says, unable to say anything else.

“Hello,” Felix echos, squirming under him. 

Slipping his hand down to Felix’s ass confirms that he’s dripping onto the floor, and fuck, what he wouldn’t give to see what his release looks like all over Felix’s skin. 

Felix makes a face when Sylvain’s fingers trace around his hole, smearing the semen around. “S-stop that.” 

Sylvain opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue, reaching up with his soiled hand. Felix’s leg bats it away.

“Don’t you _dare,”_ he warns. “That’s _disgusting.”_

“Rather me lick off _your_ hand instead?”

Felix freezes. Sylvain raises an eyebrow, and when no further protest arises he pulls Felix’s soiled hand to his mouth and licks away the mess there. His eyes never leave Felix’s face, not even when Felix looks away with a huff and scarlet cheeks.

“Thank you,” he says at last, when Sylvain is pressing ill-advised kisses to the scars on his knuckles.

“You’re welcome,” Sylvain replies with a dry tone.

“Not for that. Not--” he clears his throat and stares at the ceiling. “Not _only_ for that. For… bringing me with you out of Faergus.”

Oh.

“I’m glad you came. In more ways than one,” he adds with a laugh and an effort, watching Felix’s eyes roll.

Pulling his legs back, the swordsman rolls to his knees then staggers to his feet, pulling his clothes back together. Sylvain stays on the ground, tucking himself back into his pants with slow, unhurried movements as he watches Felix’s firelit silhouette. In another life, he could have won the Heron cup himself, with long legs and deft fingers and those arrogant eyes that never hold his for long.

“Don’t forget to blow out the light when you leave,” Felix says, slipping through the door without looking back. Once again, himself. As distant as Brigid.

Alone on the floor, surrounded by spilled oil and shattered glass bottles, Sylvain tilts his back and grins bitterly at the ceiling. “Just once,” he says to no one; maybe to Sothis, if she bothers to listen any more. “Like everyone else.”

He’ll have to make this memory last, for all that it will never be enough.


End file.
